Thursday, February 9, 2012

A Boy's Own Story*

AS READERS of this little blog will have noticed, many serious topics are treated with a measure of levity, an approach the former Mrs Bunyip dismissed as the symptom of a greying and perpetual immaturity. Well, she would approve of what follows because a six-year-old boy brought into being to satisfy a gay male couple’s happy-family fantasies is a very serious matter indeed. As the Fairfax comics reveal this morning beneath David Marr’s byline, the lad is now in protective custody in Los Angeles while his adoptive father and father are investigated for their intimate connections to members of a child-porn syndicate. The story is shocking, even on the strength of the Fairfax paper’s nuanced headlines and the details that quality journalist Marr, who is rather keen on the gay business, has somehow neglected to include in his copy, at least as it has been published.

“Boy taken from gay parents” announces the lead story on the Phage’s home page. If skimming readers gain the impression that the couple are victims of intolerance and homophobia, one guesses there would be few objections in Fairfax newsrooms. “Kid seized in porn probe” would have given a much better indication of what Marr reveals, but as the reporting of straights facts is so often these days framed as a manifestation of prejudice and intolerance, succinct accuracy probably didn’t have a chance.

The men blame their predicament on innocent visits to three men in the US, New Zealand and Germany, who, to their complete surprise, turned out to be collectors and producers of child pornography. All three were arrested last year.

The key figure was a lawyer, Edward de Sear, 64, an old friend of the boy's father, who was arrested in New Jersey and charged with distributing child pornography on the internet.

To their complete surprise!

What is a complete surprise is that Marr ia prepared to accept that they found it a complete surprise. In an omission that would have drawn his scorn during the Media Watch days, Marr neglects to mention that Edward de Sear’s home in Saddle River, New Jersey, was raided by American authorities on July 14 last year. The child was not taken into protective custody until October, which is the better part of three full months. Had Marr provided a chronology, his readers might have been inclined to wonder how the Australian couple could have remained entirely ignorant of the “old friend’s” travails, especially as two other members of their circle were being visited by police during that same period.

Marr’s softly-softly tone also overlooks some other, quite interesting angles. While he mentions that the Australian couple’s associates are being busted and probed, he makes no mention that de Sear is – or was -- a partner in the globe-girdling law firm Allen & Overy, which recently launched an Australian outpost by poaching a posse of top-shelf legal talent from Clayton Utz, Big Tobacco’s chief Australian defender. That information has no direct relevance to the abuse story, but it would still have been interesting to know.

As to de Sear’s alleged offences, Marr does summarise them, and while his precise is deeply disturbing, it is as nothing in comparison with the complaint filed against de Sear in New Jersey. That document can be found here. Be warned, it is stomach-turning. Perhaps that is why the Silly neglected to provide a link.

All the same, with the Australian couple claiming “to be victims of prejudice in Australia and the US against gay fathers”, as Marr states very early in his report, and “canvassing support for their cause in Cairns and the gay press”, the indictment’s grim details will be worth bearing in mind over the strident clamour for gay justice we are certain to hear in months to come.

This was just a matter of time. You only had to read the Boy-Love web sites over the past 10 years to see that sooner or later two of them would get together as "dads" to "express their love". Geez, even Humbert Humbert pondered the idea of having a baby by Lolita so he could enjoy himself after Lolita became an adult.

So the SMH allows an outspoken gay journalist to retail a de facto defence of two men arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing their "son", exploiting the child through child pornography "and and obtaining [the child] for the sole purpose of exploitation".People still pay money for this rag on the expectation that is reporting "news" according to journalism's code of ethics, not spinning political campaigns on behalf of minorities. I hope this story causes hundreds or thousands more people to abandon this abomination of journalism. Like the Left establishment it represents, the SMH obviously believes people are too stupid to understand what it is actually doing.

Lordy that's appallingly cobbled together by the SMH - either Marr's done a lousy job or his subs have totally let him down. The 6 year old is the natural son of one of the gay couple, was adopted by in the US, presumably by the gay male couple but maybe just by the biological dad, and the adoption is governed by US law. Is the biological dad American? What's the US connection? .... Talk about only getting the barest gist of the story.

You see, the point is that the left now comprises folk-marxists who see everything in terms of oppression. Whenever a member of one the'oppressed' groups commits or is suspected of committing a crime, the lefty bien pensants have to jump in and minimise the damage because they think that the rest of us are so thick that we can't understand the difference between an individual and the group of which he is a member. Marr and his skivvy wearing mates have to act in this clod-hoppng way because we 'ordinary Australians' may believe that all gay parents are child molesters.

David Marr, you do not condone this, you say. You say you only 'report' this. The good professor Bunyip, rightly in my opinion, suggests you need to tell a lot more of the tale in order to be considered a 'reporter' rather than something else. I know gay men who love and care for children as parents, and while it is not what I would choose for a child, unless a mother is involved for the child (and many are), I think these men need their decency to be protected. They are good men, and good parents. Your lack of complete reporting, which amounts to excuse-making, does these decent gay men no favours.

When the media "tread softly" around outrageous, despicable stories like this you can't help but get the feeling that prominent Australians may have links and associations with the perpetrators involved.Not to suggest complicity in any way, but moving within the same social circles perhaps.mr.simmon

" I do not in any way endorse the excuses these men make. I report them." This couldn't be Marr's words, for they were direct and to the point. Nor do I see the tortured soul proclaiming the prejudice evident in the commentary over his reporting. Nope, it must be the TrollBot 9000, with installed Stupido Programme v2.

I read David Marr's "to their complete surprise" (noting the word 'complete') remark as coming with a touch of cynicism. It was the sub-heading that was most misleading, together with the omission of more detail. I also think that de Sear's prior employment at a law firm to have very little, if any, indirect relevance to the story - other than this: powerful Australian men, including some who attained very high positions in the law and in foreign affairs, and in particular those who had an interest in South-East Asia, were accorded protection against prosecution. (It has long been thus of course, and even Oscar Wilde was given time to skip over to France had he wished to do so). Time has caught up with de Sear, but these Australians will go to their graves with unblemished reputations.